John Linton
It didn't take much longer than I expected for the change in government to begin sounding the death knell of any reason to expect business to be in anything other than dismal from now on. This first indication that union thuggery is back to ensure that business will slow down across the country came care of the rasping, sneering and poisonously worded rhetoric of Sharon Burrow on AM at around 7.15 this morning. God, that woman must have the worst speech therapist in the world to allow her to speak in the grating/rasping tones she constantly adopts - or maybe she just smokes three packs a day - though that wouldn't explain her sneering delivery and the almost tangible hatred she expresses.
Anyway, as far as I could make out, Ms Burrow was sounding off warnings to "employers" (apparently a 'class enemy' a la her 1860's Marxist education definitions) who "shouldn't take advantage" of the period between now and when Labour gets its new industrial relations laws passed through the Federal Parliament some time next year. Given free rein by the Labour stooges employed by the ABC as 'current affairs' interviewers and program managers Ms Burrow was her usual self in threatening retaliation against any 'employer' who took the opportunity of 'letting any employees go' before the unions gets new draconian unfair dismissal laws re-enacted.
During the interview" she also railed against the Commonwealth Bank who she said was "forcing its employees to sign AWAs" before Labour could legislate for their removal'. Funnily enough (and maybe its just my personal paranoia) she made no reference to Telstra who was reported in the press earlier last week doing exactly the same thing (Telstra/Labour entente anyone?).
Fortunately I parked before she had finished her peroration so only had to listen to a few minutes of her dinosauric understanding of modern day societies (doesn't she realise Stalin is dead?) but it cast a black cloud over the start of the week which at this very pleasant time of year I could do without.
I'd heard the 'flip side' of her threats from our accountants when we had a brief meeting with them last week. They mentioned that the common view among their clients was that all thoughts of employment were now on hold and the scaling back of investment and new projects was almost universal.
Great to hear when you're finishing off your planning for the remainder of the financial year. I can find little to be positive about when determining what Exetel should do over the next 6 - 12 months. The very strong influences are to make no new investments and to plan to hire no additional personnel and to let any employee generated resignations allow a gradual reduction in the monthly salary expenses.
As those influences go totally against all of my 'natural' inclinations and a working life time of practices, I'm finding this period very difficult to deal with. All my instincts tell me there are very hard times coming and yet I'm 'genetically engineered' to only want to do new and bigger and better things with what remains of my working life.
In mulling over the short list of possible projects for the next 6 - 12 months, I keep crossing things out and then a few hours later re-instating them. My wife thinks this is me reaching a late in life maturity which has escaped me to date but I find my current inability to quickly make a decision and move to the next one correcting any mistakes as I go on very strange.
Maybe things will look clearer tomorrow?